What is the C-BORD Community?

C-BORD has the objective to optimise project impact by raising awareness, developing, and engaging with a C-BORD Community dedicated to innovation in container Non-Intrusive Inspection (NII).
This Community includes project partners and key stakeholders in customs organisations, port authorities, container terminal operators, policy institutions, research organisations and industry.
This Platform allows us to share and discuss public results and events related to C-BORD specifically and to container NII more generally.

What is the C-BORD project?

C-BORD (effective Container inspection at BORDer control points) is a project co-funded by the European Union within the Horizon 2020 Programme under grant number 653323.

Project Abstract

Efficient NII (non-intrusive inspection) of containerised freight is critical to trade and society. Freight containers are potential means for smuggling (e.g. tobacco), illegal immigration, trafficking of drugs, mis-declared goods and dangerous illicit substances, including explosives, nuclear material, chemical and biological warfare agents and radioactively contaminated goods. One inspection NII technology cannot cope with all these targets.

The C-BORD Toolbox and Framework will address all these targets and enable customs to deploy comprehensive cost-effective container NII solutions to potentially protect all EU sea- and land-borders, satisfying a large range of container NII needs:

• The C-BORD Toolbox will include 5 complementary innovative detection technologies: delivering improved X-rays, Target Neutron Interrogation, Photofission, Sniffing and Passive Detection.
• User interfaces and data will be integrated to optimise effectiveness and efficiency of end-users and systems.
• The C-BORD Framework will help customs analyse their needs, design integrated solutions, and optimise the container inspection chain; it will address detection levels, false alarm levels, throughput, health & safety, logistics and cost & benefits.

C-BORD will increase the probability of finding illicit or dangerous content with at least equal throughput of containers per time unit, reduce the need for costly, time-consuming and dangerous manual container inspections by customs officials, and in case a container is opened, increase the probability of finding illicit materials.

C-BORD involves stakeholders from 9 EU countries as partners, plus external advisory group members. On 3 customs sites, integrated solutions will be trialled, respectively addressing the needs of big seaports, small seaports and mobile land borders. To optimise sustainable impact, C-BORD will actively engage with a large community, support policy implementation, evolution and start early exploitation planning.